GDC 08: Crackdown Developer Talks New MMO
Dave Jones Roxxorz our Soxxorz with APB
Well, I have to admit that I’m a little high off of that presentation. Dave Jones is a breath of fresh air for MMO design and it tastes good. He had a lot to say, and said it with strong belief. To find out what Dave (from the developer of Crackdown) had to talk about and his next game, the All Points Bulletin MMO, follow the jump.
David Jones began by stated that he’s not really making an MMORPG, because MMOs don’t always have to be RPGs, nor do they always have to be fantasy or sci fi, since that limits your audience.
He wants to get away from the geeky stigma and root games in the contemporary world that people can understand right away without needing a niche culture passport. In fact, he says he’s not even sure most MMOs are “massively multiplayer” at all, considering that most of your time is spent in 5-25 man raids.
A dedicated server for a game, this Jones considers the most exciting part. Instead of asking what kind of MMO he should make, he thinks of what game he can make with a dedicated server. New audiovisual effects are great for artists and composers, but he feels like adding the dedicated server is a serious asset for designers.
So on the back of Crackdown, Realtime Worlds’ first release, David Jones wants fewer constraints and more freedom, because “the true beauty of our medium is in the players’ imaginations, not the designers’.” He also boldly says, “I like to leave the story to books and movies, they do it so well.” This is clearly evident in Crackdown, since nobody plays that game for its narrative; it’s all about the crazy times with crazy super powers.
So what’s going to be in this new game of his, APB? Well for starters, one hell of a character editor. And not just a character editor, but an everything editor. Not only can you pinch and pull each facial feature, grow the hair, put on weight, pop out veins, add freckles or fresh/aged scars, but the decal system in this game is fantastic.
You’ve seen decals in racing games before, but in this game the system extends to tattoos, clothing, cars – all your stuff. You make a clan/gang (instead of a “guild-” part of his replacement of geek with chic agenda) and create your own completely unique look.
Everything is scalable and (he hammered this point home) high quality, as if an actual artist designed it. None of that cheap decal that looks like you slapped some paint on your shirt; tattoos look like tattoos and clothing looks like cloth. Basically everything from the music you hear in your car (which supports custom soundtracks and even matches music/music style with others you play with) to the jeans hanging off your ass (if you so choose – your boxers don’t have to show) is ridiculously customizable.
Summing up the character editor portion with toons of some industry greats, including Shigeru Miyamoto in mushroom boxers and an old school Mario t-shirt, drove home the fact that not only could you make whatever you want (within the constraints of a realistic world – no aliens) but you could just make yourself.
At this point I was thinking, well that’s great, but what’s the game? Well, you plop a couple hundred players into a big city (from high rise to waterfront), give them some sandbox tools (physics, guns, vehicles) and ask them to choose sides.
Players pick to be enforcement or gang and will receive missions accordingly from their bosses. For example, we watched one mission that sent gang members to hijack a truck. Although the truck driver is some NPC, it gets interesting in that instead of “Artificial Incompetence” going after you, the game will assign other players to try and stop you through some dynamic matchmaking magic. This way, every mission is automatically different because you’re not just grinding the same MOBs.
Speaking of the grind, Jones declares it a “broken hook,” adding, “…it’s called a grind for a reason.” He has played lots of WoW, but he played it “like a programmer” by just hitting the sequence of buttons that works and repeating and repeating. So how do you keep people playing when there is…ahem…NO LEVELING? Apparently, it’s all about pimping your character; “visual progression, not spreadsheet.”
The other important thing that will keep people coming back is having great core gameplay. For this, he refers to Counter-Strike, calling it, “the best online game ever.” He bet that many people in the audience were compelled to play it for 100+ hours because, as he said earlier in the talk, “Multiplayer gaming is really where it’s at.”
To illustrate one way to balance out noobs vs. hardcore veterans, he showed another example mission where four novices (in rather plain t-shirts and minimal gear) are sent to steal TVs. The matchmaking system finds one badass guy who’s been playing for six months and sends him in. This makes him feel like a badass, and gives the noobs a sense of (false) hope that maybe they can survive. Yeah, this hope is crushed when he pulls out a rocket launcher. Death, however, is not so bad – just an inconvenience of a short distance and the time taken to hop-skip back.
In-game Character Model
One great thing about MMO’s is that they are never complete, and take inspiration from their players. This can be seen in a feature asked for by APB’s QA team; a videocamera. One player can be the videographer while the rest make costumes and stage elaborate theatrics in the streets – with blocked off roads to stop AI from driving through the middle of the set. Other players can still crash through and aspiring actors will stand around asking to be let in the movie, but creative people will be able to have even more fun in APB.
More importantly, players can design their experience with the game themselves. “Watch, listen, embrace,” is Dave Jones’ mantra for supporting players, and that sounds absolutely rad.
No news on a timeframe, so it’s probably best to wait until a later date to start shopping for your new PC. I hope that what he told us about the specs not being so crazy is true, because I gotta play this game.
